


Paint

by Owlix



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Cybertronian aesthetics, Cybertronian culture, Decepticon culture, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 21:29:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2203716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlix/pseuds/Owlix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megatron never got used to the feeling of paint on his plating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint

Megatron never got used to the feeling of paint on his plating.

In the mines, Megatron’s bare plating had been a matter of practicality. Paint looked nice and served a protective function, but it was high maintenance and it didn’t wear well - not in the sort of high-impact work Megatron spent his shifts at. It chipped. It made scrapes and gashes more obvious.

Not that this kept all miners from wearing it. Impactor wore his scuffed-up paint with pride. He seemed to enjoy showing off the long scrapes in his paint job when he went topside - grinning when mechs with less physical jobs and more disposable income stared.

 _Let them see what a real mech looks like,_ he would say, grinning. _Let them see what their energon really costs. What it takes to keep them fed._

 

It wasn’t that Megatron didn’t see what a good paintjob could do for a mech. He’d have to be blind not to be aware of that, having worked with Starscream for four million years.

And there were political ramifications that appealed to him. Good paint was the mark of the upper castes. There was a certain appeal in co-opting that, at least in the abstract.

Soundwave - sharp and subtle-minded - had seen this immediately. Repainted and clean, he’d kept himself the simple disposable-caste solid blue of his forging, but his paint job was meticulously detailed, and the paint itself extremely high-end, set in with metallic sparkle and finished with a clear topcoat that gleamed. Co-opting the upper caste’s luxury without conforming to their aesthetics.

Megatron could appreciate the appeal, aesthetically and politically and practically. But his plating stayed unpainted, bare save for a coat of high-end wax.

 

Tarn - the latest Tarn, slavishly, irritatingly dedicated with a fervor that Megatron didn’t fully trust - _he_ noticed, in his subtly observant way. When this Tarn had been given the new name and leadership of the Division, he’d been given a new rebuild to go along with it. A tank, of course - Megatron’s first freely-chosen alt-mode. That much had already been decided for him, a legacy of the position and title. But each inheritor had some input on the finer details of his form.

Tarn’s purple finish wasn’t paint. No, he’d requested that the color be oxidized right into the metal of his plating. Exactly like Megatron, he was all bare metal save for a thin coating of wax and a few carefully-placed details.

 

Of all Megatron’s rebuilds - and there had been many of them, because Megatron _did not get attached_ , not to form or to mechs or to methods, had learned that lesson well and early - only one had been painted.

He’d had no input into that decision. Shockwave had designed that body for him. A necessity, and Megatron was not complaining.

His new body had been a joy - all grace and power, smooth joints and the freedom of flight. The paint was the highest end, a high-tech matte finish that scattered light and made his outline fuzzy at best to proximity sensors and radar. It had been beautiful in a way that suited him; ruthless and efficient, designed for deception and for violence.

He never got used to the feel of the paint.

It never felt right. He got used to everything else - the wings, the hypersensitive ailerons and flight sensors that responded to every shift in air current (and suddenly, much about Starscream made more sense,) the flight engines that ran hot and burned through too much fuel. He got used to all of it. Everything but that damned _paint_.

To have it stripped would have been irrational, so he left it. But on his next rebuild -- a tank, and there was _no deeper meaning_ to that, it _did not mean_ he was getting nostalgic in his old age, and did not mean he was _attached_ \--

On his next build, Megatron’s armor was bare again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
